A snowfall

These days find me looking for work like much of the country. Actually, like much of the world. I would have to be an ego-maniac if I thought that I was personally being marginalized. There is a bigger picture. However, it is still frustrating to think on these things. Ramble ramble...
There is a weird sort of irony that befalls the ambitious. Just when you think that you are on your way to changing things and making a difference, you are given a taste of the bigger picture and your mind is changed. You find a sense of disillusionment settling on you like a light snow settles soundlessly on hedges in the front lawn. You missed it. What you thought you were working for was not at all what you were really after.
I truly believe that it is through these circumstances that God shows us the depth of his love for us. It is when our snow-fallen, crest-fallen, mistaken ambition is revealed that we are opened and our true nature is exposed. We are allowed to see, if only for a brief moment, our motives, our desires, our goals, and how they fall infinitely short of his glory. He doesn't do this to hurt us, but to reveal our sources of ambition so we can submit them to Him.
In my case, I have been working in my current environment as a supervisor of a small, efficient team of part-time workers. I have accomplished quite a deal in organization and structure, and have enjoyed seeing the effects of my labor. I was able to draw from multiple life-experiences in this position, and boost productivity while instituting policy change that has radically affected our workflow. All of this has been done in a vacuum and apart from any sort of direct guidance, but with a freedom that gave me the opportunity to work hard and get stuff done.
In recent months, with the growing concern for the economy, I have begun to ask questions of long-term intentions, including trying to secure a full-time spot that was open. Suddenly, I had crossed the line. What everyone had seemed so supportive of was now not so important, and while people had sung the praises of my work, the singing had stopped. The snow was beginning to fall.
As the months have rolled on, the painful process of realizing how little my work has mattered to the people who are in the position to make decisions has prompted me to re-examine much of what I thought I already had figured out. I had thought my goals were set. I had thought my motive was godly, appropriate and thought-out. In fact, I had made decisions that were based on trusting God with our future, finances, and education. But what I found out was that I had put myself in a position to fuel my personal ambition and not one that would let God be Lord.
Life is very complex. I have never been in a position where everything makes sense. However, the more I learn and the more I study, the more I am convinced that God defies our understanding. Instead of standing aside of the pain of the circumstance, and analyzing it, I am slowly learning that perhaps I am not meant to understand it. Perhaps I am meant TO EXPERIENCE IT. Could it be that God intends pain for his creatures, not for the analysis, but for the lesson learned experientially? I do think so. Now I am standing in the pain, learning it, almost tasting it. It is a beautiful, lovely, and terrible way that a loving God communicates life-truth to his beloved.
Make no mistake about it, knowledge about a situation is not the same as the KNOWLEDGE OF SITUATION. My encouragement to anyone reading this post is to risk the title of the masochist. Look into the river of freezing water rushing past you, or the cold calm snow befalling you. Stop analyzing it. Stop fixing it. Jump in. Let the snow collect on your opened ambition. This is intended to change your mind in a transformational way that facts alone cannot do.